The Commercium
The Commercium is original content, invented by myself, that I use in various space age science fiction settings. Inspired by the "Exchange" from Stars Without Number (not to be mistaken with The Exchange from Star Wars), the Commercium is a galactic and more importantly, neutral bank. The name is inspired by the Merchants guild from Age of Decadence (an Isometric computer RPG), and was chosen by one of my friends. I've chosen to root the Commercium in the Star Wars universe, but they can very easily be retrofitted for any other Space age science fiction setting. History The Commercium has it's roots in the Rakatan Infinite Empire, which predates any currently existing factions. The Rakatan Infinite Empire (RIE) started out as most Empires, being a bunch of separate nations that eventually joined under common rule. At first, this made them a nearly socialistic dictatorship, ruled by a powerful elite, but with ever growing rights and welfare for the people. The RIE eventually grew so large that it was necessary to establish viceroys and soon even further divide their nation in smaller portions, and this of course reintroduced the free market, as suddenly it was necessary to create an incentive to export and import goods over great distances. The Commercium was born, under a different name and was originally a merchants guild. The Commercium soon started taking over banking, mainly because large corporations started erupting in the empire, and these corporations loved to sell ownership in their companies to maximize their profits. The Commercium was not exactly owned by anyone, but it was eventually also established as a partially government owned corporation, allowing it to buy stocks and bonds. The Commercium ended up the largest bank in the RIE, and as it grew to control more and more of the Empire's trade and money flow, it eventually become such an important part of the Empire, that the Empire started to rescind a bit of it's freedom. Almost over night, a lot of the people deeply invested in the Commercium were replaced with people extremely loyal to the RIE, and the RIE became almost directly responsible for logistics within the space owned by the RIE. The the Rakatans eventually created Humans, deeming them to be their best slave-species to date, they put a lot of humans in charge of large portions of the Commercium, eventually even allowing some of the to rise into positions of moderate leadership, and soon almost all Commercium employees were humans, as the Rakatans stopped working, excepting a few leadership positions here and there, to keep an eye on operations - reaping the rewards of being the greatest slaver nation ever to have existed. And then the first Scream happened. Post Rakatan Empire The Rakatan Empire collapsed rapidly, and the only things to have survived were small outposts and the Commercium. The Commercium is credited with being one of the driving factors behind the establishment of the Republic, but they chose to remain neutral and unaffiliated with the Republic, other than servicing their monetary needs. The Commercium established the intergalactic credit and were behind the invention of the PIDU unit, to eliminate identity fraud. They were also behind the invention of the quantum entanglement communicators, making it possible to communicate across vast distances (in fact ANY distance - in real time), and many other earlier forms of communication. The Commercium Established the Lawbringer Guild, a guild of bounty hunters, private detectives and the odd PMC company (mostly pirate hunters) that they employed to hunt down those that broke the relatively few laws of the Commercium. The Lawbringers guild would also branch out Galactic factions would rise and fall, but the Commercium would remain, and treat all of them as equal customers. When the Zakuul Empire eventually rose to power in secret, the Commercium already knew about their existence, as it did with the returning Sith Empire before. A fact that was of course kept secret from the citizens of the Republic, as the politicians of the Republic knew they couldn't exist without the Commercium, and that the people, should they find out, would no longer accept the Commercium. Even the Mandalorians were serviced by the Commercium. Second Scream When the second scream happened, everything collapsed again, and this time, the Commercium made a decision that went strongly against it's nature of not meddling in political, biological, cultural or religious affairs - it decided to ban Psionic factions. Psionics were not banned from living or being a part of society - they were not even banned from achieving leadership positions, but no nation was allowed to be under control of psionics by rule, such as it was with the Sith Empire, the Jedi Order (being an independent member of the Republic) or the Zakuul Empire for that matter. It further more demanded that every nation would control their psionics and set as a demand that all psionics received academy training, which would include teaching them about the dangers of taking their powers too far, but also which powers were strictly illegal to use, teaching them how it was unethical to use said powers in said ways and generally teach them basic control. Finally, the Commercium demanded separation of any and all religions and any and all states/nations. While they did not ban religions, or even psionic religions, they prohibited any nations from formally employing, including or supporting any such religions. The Commercium as a free faction was born from the ashes of a scream, and while in the wake of time, they had forgotten their roots and origins, they had existing contingencies for if it should happen again, and this allowed them to, within a few hundred years, salvage the galaxy on a moderate level. The Commercium started hiring more permanent troops of their own, making a clear divide in freelance Lawbringers and permanent hires. The Commercium also decided to start their own subsidiaries, taking over large portions of intergalactic logistics and buying stocks in the remaining arms manufacturers and ship producers.